Photo Credit: Reuters Houston Mayor Anisse Parker is infringing upon American citizen’s basic constitutional rights and the people should be outraged, author Eric Metaxas told The Daily Caller.

“We should be out in the streets, banging pots and pans,” Metaxas said. “This is big news, and we should be alarmed: we should be sounding the alarm.”

The city of Houston subpoenaed sermons and personal correspondence on the topics of homosexuality and gender identity from a group of five pastors. This is not an issue of religion, but an issue of constitutional rights, Rev. Dave Welch, executive director of the Texas Pastor Council told TheDC.

“This kind of overreach by government, directly into constitutionally protected activities, both of petition and of speech and religion, is just unprecedented,” Welch said.

In response to the Houston subpoena, the Southern Baptist-affiliated Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC) proposed that pastors across the nation send their sermons to the mayor’s office. The group’s president Dr. Russell Moore told TheDC that the ERLC had an immediate response of pastors in Houston and around the country that wanted to stand in solidarity with the pastors who had been subpoenaed.